Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1887-04-22
The Lesson of the Recent Strike.

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belongs To the domain of social man
ners in the large sense in which the
Easy Chair interprets the word $500.
The idle crowds along the wha rves in
the busy winter days were significant
phenomenon. They h al refused TO work,
not because they were unju silly treated,
or were dissatisfied with their con-
tracts, but because some other men else
where were dissatisfied and had struck.
They did not contemp late violence.
Their theory was tn at all men who
work for daily wages should make
common cause. and that il shoe
maker demands more wages, which
his employer refuses to pay, all masons,
carpenters. and all other workmen in
every trade and calling should refuse
to do stroke more of work until the
Employer yields. The strike, there
fore, was in great part n movement of
sympathy. But il was the cause OF
sruel suffering 10 the mo st helpless and
innocent part of the community. The
sympathy, however, was wholly theo-
retical. The larger body of Idlers
struck work with the utmost reluctance,
and solely because they were ordered
to strike, for reasons that they did not
know. They Obeyed certain leaders,
and it is certainly needful that leaders
should be very wise and disintereste d
and humane who are vested with pow
or at their will TO stop all the wheels
and hammers of industry, and paralyze
the entire business activity of a great
community.
And what is it that these leaders do
when they order their followers to
abandon their work because some
workmen are dissatisfied? What they
do is this they sit in judgment upon a
contract between an employer and an
employee. They decide, generally
without hearing both sides. that the
smploye has been wronged; and they
endeavor by deprving the employer
of the aid of workmen 10 compel him
to accept their judgment by fear of
ruin. In executing this judgment they
expose an army Of employees and their
families 10 starvation, and hundreds
and thousands of employers to ruin.
which depr.ves the employees of work.
In other words. these leaders exercise
an authority which, so far as it goes,
makes them dictators of the welfare of
the community, and this not by the
choice OF the community, but by the
assent Of a certain part of ia small
minorty-who place themselves under
the absolute control of such leaders.
The usual procedure of strike recalls
D'Azeglio's definition of assassination
the execution of sentence pro-
nounced without taial by an incompet-
ent tribunal
The justification pleaded for this
transaction is that employers combine to
depress wages. and therefore employees
must combine to resist them. But it is
not true that as a class employers thus
combine. Some employers may DO so.
But every cmployc knows that wages
are not determined by a conspiracy of
employers. but mainly by causes which
they cannot control Undoubtedly the
power of great corporations is often
grossly abused as the power of labor
organizations is often abused. To as
sumo a state Of war, and TO endeavor to
ajust the relations of employers and en-
ployes upon that basis, is merelyS Ito
invite a contest of endurance or
of force, which cannot possibly set
tie the ESSENTIAL question .............
To use the power of great associa-
tons arbitrarily TO raise the price Of any
necessary Of life is anarchical, becaus
it tends to violence and outrage. But
such a crime does not pass unexposed
nor undenounced. In its nature how
ever, it does not produce an immed late,
visible effect. palpable effect and dis.
turbance like strike. and therefore it
does not occupy the same space in the
newspapers.
1t is not true, aga n, that the en-
ploye pleads in vain unless he strikes.
The public sympathy was plainly with
the telegraph strike three or four years
ago. and with one of the street rail-
road strikes. If an employer breaks
his word, or Will pay only inadequate
wages, the public is quite as ready to
condemn him rs an employee who
breaks his word, or who tries TO pre-
vent another man from taking wages
with which he is sat SIZED. The idle
men upon the wharves whom the Easy
Chair sees from the window are often
illtreated, but in striking they are
generally the dupes of craftier men.
Why should any man make himself the
slave of another, and agree to obey
his command, as the children say in
play, ''unsight, unseen?" Organiza-
ton is wise and necessary to secure
great results But it should be a man
lv intel iUant salf-rpsnectinO or0ani1a